


she fell through time

by Quitebrilliantindeed



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Abstract, Gen, History, Implied Relationships, Time - Freeform, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-08
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 20:33:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/917731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quitebrilliantindeed/pseuds/Quitebrilliantindeed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the way back, Homura sees--feels-- things. People. Places. Events. Histories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	she fell through time

**Author's Note:**

> It started with an image of Homura falling through a glowing "web" made of "timelines," and turned into this. Enjoy!

Throughout the throngs of history, violence and ill-fate have always existed. It was an obvious statement, the kind taught in even primary schools, and as such, rarely given half-a-thought. You gasped when you were supposed to and quietly whispered your sorrows when it was appropriate, but it never really connected. You didn’t weep over things like that—it was all sad, of course, but you rarely had reason for it to burden your heart with any permanent load.

When Homura fell into the gaps of time, it came to her why this might be true. Reading and experiencing—they truly were two entirely different worlds. It was the same reason why she would cry at a war novel, and merely frown at a textbook, except on a much greater scale. One had feeling, a narrative. People. The other was just a vomiting of numbers and facts.

Learning about history was distant and impersonal. Experiencing it was to feel each event and all of its consequences.

Each time she made the jump, she saw things. For how long, or how many, she could never discern, but it would hit her like a gust of wind and keep her screaming, painful company until she could wake up in her hospital bed all over again.

She had become a spectator to the history of the world. She realized it only after the second or third time through—that the trip backwards meant being dragged across millions upon billions of timelines, the stories of countless souls and the performances of an impossible number of events, all to reach her own thread buried somewhere deep within the web. They were packed together like haystacks, so close that Homura could scarcely tell where one began and one ended. In her mind’s eye, it simply all came upon her at once:

She saw the fires of Pompeii— the smoke rising across the sky as ash buried thousands of howling souls into the dirty Earth. She watched as Presidents were assassinated, as the Kingdoms of Africa bartered and flourished. Fire was discovered. Humanity evolved. Massacres happened before her eyes. Atomic bombs fell like raindrops and human beings shifted against each other in the sickly interiors of European slave ships, and she watched it all unfold before her.

Most of all, she _felt._ She felt everything as a person actually living each triumph and tragedy—a single young woman experiencing innumerable lives in a matter of mere seconds, or at least what felt like it.

Sometimes, this ordeal had become a natural part of her life. In a matter of break or survive, Homura would always choose the latter, if not for her own sake. As such, she had to adjust. She learned how to handle it, to dull her sense just enough so that the blossoms of feelings would not overwhelm her in those few brief seconds upon her arrival wherein she still could remember the details of each nightmare. ‘For Madoka’s sake.’ She reminded herself before each jump, and set to focusing all of her heart onto the ghost of the girl’s image as she stepped forth to fall through time.

However, it was nothing perfect. Time was too great a concept for a single person to bear.

“Take me home…!” She would wail, hair whipping at her face in the windless sky. Her fingertips would brush along a thread of time and with desperation she would grab ahold, and use it to guide her body forward. It was often a thoughtless action—the burst of experiences such direct contact conveyed were a double-edged sword, laced with both despair and joy, and bubbling with unfathomable oceans of information. The pain would intensify under the strength of that current— but only briefly—then she would sail forward, even faster than before, and grab ahold of her own precious thread.

Part of her knew it was only an illusion and that part only grew and grew with each subsequent jump. Rationality had become her companion, and it made her well aware of the facts. Her mind was only compensating for what it could not fathom. She had no control over such a journey—she initiated it, yes, and then she became as much of a spectator for the ride as she was for the stories she encountered as it carried her.

It was not a journey. It was falling, falling with the slow ticking of a grandfather clock tapping on and on in the back of her head, and the pain of history to smash her spirit down without mercy.

This—perhaps this was just another punishment of being a Magical Girl. She had taken on the burden of one person, and ended up with the burdens of billions. The unfairness of it all struck her once again, cutting her outer skin like a knife and hovering delicately over her heart.

Teetering at the cusp of giving up and letting history swallow her whole, Homura curled in on herself, and thought of Madoka.

No. Not yet. For Madoka, it would be worth it.

So she fell through time.


End file.
